The Moonlit Mind: A Tale of Suspense

white.”

“Not cats. Mirabell. You’ve got to see how she’s dressed.”

“She can dress any way she likes. Why would I care?”

“But this is weird.”

“She’s always playing dress-up.”

“Not like this,” Harley insisted. “Mom’s dressing her, and it’s just weird.”

Before her marriage to Giles Gregorio, Clarette never had much time for her children. She says that she prefers to play with grown men. Children are her business, she explains, not a leisure-time activity. She sports or games, or cuddles, with them only on those rare occasions when vodka and more powerful substances put her in a foolish or sentimental mood.

Since the wedding, she has become even more remote from them. If anyone is raising Crispin, Harley, and Mirabell, it is the staff of Theron Hall.

“I heard Mom say, when they finish fitting Mirabell’s new dress, they’re going to give her a bath in warm milk and rinse her with aqua pura, whatever that is.”

From high on the ladder, Crispin at last looks down at his brother. “That is weird.”

“And there’s other weird stuff like the hat they’ve made for her. You’ve got to come see.”

The model of the mansion will be here for further exploration whenever Crispin wishes to return to it.

He climbs down to a safe height before unhooking the tether and then descending the final ten rungs.

As Crispin follows his brother into the third-floor hallway, Harley whispers, “They don’t know I saw. I think Pip’s new dress is for some surprise party or something, and probably we aren’t supposed to see it until then.”

Hurrying down the back stairs, Harley explains that he was on the prowl for the mysterious white cats, alert and stealthy, when he came across the scene with their mother, Mirabell, and a housemaid named Proserpina.

Among the many chambers on the second floor are a sewing room and a gift-wrapping room. They are side by side.

Harley quietly leads Crispin into the gift-wrapping room. The single curtained window provides little light.

An interior door connects this space with the place where Proserpina, not only a housemaid but also a seamstress, repairs and alters clothes for the family and staff. The door stands about three inches ajar.

Harley crouches low, and Crispin leans over him, so they can both spy upon the activities in the sewing room.

Mirabell stands on a yard-square platform about a foot high. Their mother kneels before her, fussing with the fancy collar of the girl’s white dress. Proserpina kneels behind Mirabell, pinning the waistline of the frock for some adjustment that she apparently will make.

This is no ordinary dress. The fabric is shiny but less clingy than silk, less stiff than satin, so soft-looking. It almost seems to glow a little, as though the dress produces its own light. The cuffs and collar are made of lace, more intricate than any Crispin has previously seen.

Mirabell wears white slippers with white bows. Attached to each bow is what appears to be a cluster of red berries.

“I feel very pretty,” Mirabell says.

“You are very pretty,” their mother replies.

“These are like ballerina slippers.”

“They are a little,” Clarette agrees.

“Will we dance tonight?”

“Some of us will dance,” Clarette says.

“I know how to pirouette.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you do it.”

“This dress will really swoosh when I pirouette.”

Mirabell’s blond hair, usually straight, is curly now. Her dress glows, and her hair glimmers.

Perched on her head is not a hat, which is what Harley called it, but instead a wreath. The wreath appears to have been woven of real leaves of some kind, and with white ribbon. There seem to be acorns attached to it, as well as clusters of bright red teardrop berries like those on her slippers, three fruits in each cluster.

“If I take a bath in milk, won’t I stink?” Mirabell asks.

“No, sweetie. There are rose petals and essence of roses in the milk. Anyway, we’ll rinse you afterward with nice warm water.”

“Aqua pura.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s aqua pura?”

“The cleanest water in the world.”

“Why don’t we rinse with it every day?”

“It’s only for special occasions.”

“Does it come in a bottle?”

“Sometimes. But we’ll pour it from silver bowls. Wait till you see them, they’re very pretty bowls.”

“Cool,” Mirabell says. “Mommy, on special occasions, do you rinse in aqua pura?”

For some reason, this question so amuses Proserpina that she can’t contain a little laugh.

Clarette says, “Aqua pura is only for little girls and boys.”

Except that she doesn’t have wings, Mirabell is so beautiful that she looks like an angel in her white dress, the wreath a kind of halo.

Eye to the gap between door and jamb, Crispin is surprised by how much his sister looks like an angel. He half expects her to float off the floor and glide around the room.

Their mother says, “All right, sweetie. Let’s get you out of this dress so Proserpina can make the final alterations.”

First, their mother removes Mirabell’s slippers, and then she and the seamstress strip the dress from the girl, who stands now in her undies.

Crispin is only nine, Mirabell six. He has never before been embarrassed to see his sister in her underclothes. Strangely, he is embarrassed now, but he can’t look away.

Clarette rises to her feet, lifts the wreath off her daughter’s head, and places it on a small table that is draped in a white cloth. She handles the wreath as if it is a thing of great value.

Now another housemaid, Arula, enters the sewing room. She looks like that actress, Jennifer Aniston, but younger.

“Come, Little Bell,” says Arula. “Time for your special bath.”

Mirabell steps off the yard-square platform. In her bare feet and underclothes, she follows Arula out of the room, into the hall.

Harley eases away from his brother and moves toward the door between the gift-wrapping room and the hallway.

Lingering at the connecting door, Crispin alone hears the last exchange between his mother and Proserpina.

With evident amusement, the seamstress says, “If not aqua pura, what do you bathe in for special occasions?”

“Dragon piss,” says Clarette, and she shares a laugh with the other woman before leaving the sewing room.

Crispin has heard his mother use worse language than this. He is not shocked, merely confused. He can’t make sense of her comment or of anything he’s just witnessed.

When they are sure Arula, their mother, and their sister have gone to one bathroom or another, the brothers slip out of the gift-wrapping room, angle south across the hallway, and take refuge in Harley’s room, which is next door to Crispin’s.

Although they discuss the scene in the sewing room, they can’t reach any conclusions about what it means. Maybe Mirabell is going to a party this evening. But the brothers haven’t been told of it.